Tierra Bella Century

Well, maybe it was just as well the Tierra Bella was sold out before you could register… turned out to be kind of a wild day. On top of the morning rain and some rather strong afternoon winds, this is what happened to me:

I get to the start late because I didn’t have my act together and instead of packing the night before, I packed my car on Saturday morning… this plus being rather slow in putting my bike together caused me to start 45 minutes later than I had planned.

At Mile 0.5, I briefly get off course because one of the staff said “turn right” and I didn’t hear her say “Red (for 200k) go straight” right after that…

At Mile 2, I get a flat tire. One of the SAG vehicles passes by me at that point, and after I put in a new tube I borrow their floor pump, but it took us awhile to get its chuck to seal on my valve stem… Anyhow, this all took about 20 minutes, so now I was over 1 hour behind most of the 200k riders already.

Not being able to follow other riders meant that I had to use the map (esp. since the road wasn’t marked very well at all… instead of painting distinct arrows, they just drew straight lines with a spray can, which wasn’t always too noticeable esp. since construction workers had painted their own symbols all over the roads which looked very similar). Hence I got off course about 10 times for a total of ~6 miles.

In the meantime I snapped about half a dozen pictures before I realized I had no film in the camera.

I needed to get to the checkpoint at Mile 80 by 2:00p iin order to be allowed to do the rest of the 200k course… unfortunately, I missed it by half an hour. So I had to bypass a 18-mile loop and join the other riders.

At least then I stopped getting lost. However, with 10 miles to go, I get another flat. This one I had to patch because I had only brought one spare tube.

With 50 feet to go to my car, I crash. My fault and I didn’t hit anyone; it’s just that I was a little too focused on my car and was being inattentive, when all of a sudden I see a car pull out. This startled me and I slammed on the brakes, instantly going down. Wasn’t hurt though the impact did break off part of my shifter.

So that is my ride report. All in all I did 115 miles (127 – 18 due to missing the cutoff + 6 due to getting lost), and though I wouldn’t exaclty qualify it as a disaster, it could have gone smoother.

Hope you had a great weekend yourself though.

Ride Data

109 mi + 6 miles getting lost = 115 mi

7:45am start, 5:00pm finish—9:15 hours

Average Speed: 14.1 mph moving, 12.4 mph overall

Max Speed: 41 mph

Total Climbing: rolling, with only significant climb being Metcalf Rd. (which I had to bypass)

Rating

(1=ho hum; 5=best)

Scenery: 4 Very green due to the recent rains.

Support/Organization: 2. To me, road markings were terrible.

Food: 4. However, I didn’t get much chances to stop and enjoy it due to time constraints.